IEEE Computer Society President Dejan Milojicic and a team of nine technologists have surveyed the landscape and identified the 23 game-changing technologies that will have the biggest impact on our world by 2022.

Predicting the future is hard and risky. Predicting the future in the computer industry is even harder and riskier due to dramatic changes in technology and limitless challenges to innovation. Only a small fraction of innovations truly disrupt the state of the art. Some are not practical or cost-effective, some are ahead of their time, and some simply do not have a market. There are numerous examples of superior technologies that were never adopted because others arrived on time or fared better n the market. Therefore this document is only an attempt to better understand where technologies are going. The book Innovators Dilemma and its sequels best describe the process of innovation and disruption.

1. Security Cross-Cutting Issues The growth of large data repositories and emergence of data analytics have combined with intrusions by bad actors, governments, and corporations to open a Pandora's box of issues. How can we balance security and privacy in this environment?

2. Open Intellectual Property Movement From open source software and standards to open-access publishing, the open IP movement is upon us. What are the implications?

3. Sustainability Can electronic cars, LED lighting, new types of batteries and chips, and increasing use of renewables combat rising energy use and an explosion in the uptake of computing?

4. Massively Online Open Courses MOOCs have the potential to transform the higher-education landscape, siphoning students from traditional universities and altering faculty and student roles. How significant will their impact be?

5. Quantum Computing Constrained only by the laws of physics, quantum computing will potential extend Moore's Law into the next decade. As commercial quantum computing comes within reach, new breakthroughs are occurring at an accelerating pace.

6. Device and Nanotechnology It is clear that MEMS devices, nanoparticles, and their use in applications are here to stay. Nanotechnology has already been useful in manufacturing sunscreen, tires, and medical devices that can be swallowed.

7. 3D Integrated Circuits The transition from printed circuit boards to 3D-ICs is already underway in the mobile arena, and will eventually spread across the entire spectrum of IT products.

9. Multicore By 2022, multicore will be everywhere, from wearable systems and smartphones to cameras, games, automobiles, cloud servers, and exa-scale supercomputers.

10. Photonics Silicon photonics will be a fundamental technology to address the bandwidth, latency, and energy challenges in the fabric of high-end systems.

11. Networking and Interconnectivity Developments at all levels of the network stack will continue to drive research and the Internet economy.

12. Software-defined Networks OpenFlow and SDN will make networks more secure, transparent, flexible, and functional.

13. High-performance ComputingWhile some governments are focused on reaching exascale, some researchers are intent on moving HPC to the cloud.

14. Cloud ComputingBy 2022, cloud will be more entrenched and more computing workloads run on the cloud.

15. The Internet of ThingsFrom clothes that monitor our movements to smart homes and cities, the Internet of Things knows no bounds, except for our concerns about ensuring privacy amid such convenience.

16. Natural User InterfacesThe long-held dreams of computers that can interface with us through touch, gesture, and speech are finally coming true, with more radical interfaces on the horizon.

17. 3D Printing3D printing promises a revolution in fabrication, with many opportunities to produce designs that would have been prohibitively expensive.

18. Big Data and AnalyticsThe growing availability of data and demand for its insights holds great potential to improve many data-driven decisions.

19. Machine Learning and Intelligent SystemsMachine learning plays an increasingly important role in our lives, whether it's ranking search results, recommending products, or building better models of the environment.

20. Computer Vision and Pattern RecognitionUnlocking information in pictures and videos has had a major impact on consumers and more significant advances are in the pipeline.

21. Life SciencesTechnology has been pivotal in improving human and animal health and addressing threats to the environment.

22. Computational Biology and BioinformaticsVast amounts of data are enabling the improvement of human health and unraveling of the mysteries of life.

23. Medical RoboticsFrom autonomous delivery of hospital supplies to telemedicine and advanced prostheses, medical robotics has led to many life-saving innovations.

An absolute master-piece. Although we may have a few more technologies to add to the list.

S.M. Claassen

09/27/2014 05:48 AM

A very commendable effort on the part of IEEE CS, harnessing its breadth and depth to compile an engaging predictive narrative with a plausible 8-year horizon.

There is, however, obviously more to be said about the underlying assumptions on which this study is based than a fleeting reference to Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation. Namely consensus regarding the sustainability of and insight into (the) innovation (process) itself (in economic, environmental and social terms) should arguably stave any viable descriptive future scenario or normative strategy in that direction. Conceivably a concept of sustainable innovation would address among others the status of human creativity and intellectual capital within a holistic anthropological perspective - that is, humanity as measure of technology (as the motto on IEEE's latest logo asserts).

Also the diversity of this vision's interdisciplinarity will need to be spanned by integrative "killer apps" in order to arrive at some point of technological unification and which this study may help to identify and assess.

Abdul

09/30/2014 10:34 AM

An Ideal World going to become Real

andrew

10/31/2014 03:36 AM

we are waiting for a big challenge

Ornela

11/17/2014 14:46 PM

Actually I am so concern about sustainability. Cisco's energywise is good and all the other things you have mention too, but I think we have to increase public awareness. Most of people don't know that if you leave your computer on or standby, or even turned off but plugged in, it still consumes energy. There are these little things that make these big things. All these technologies will produce such a massive data.

Marguerite Grandjean

11/18/2014 06:31 AM

Hi everyone, Have you seen the scenario work done last year by the IEEE Ad Hoc Committee on Strategic Planning? Video: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/strategy/index.htmlReport: http://www.ieee.org/about/research/world_scenarios_of_2030.pdfThe SWOT analysis on page 122 of the IEEE 2022 report provides similar insights as those gleaned from the scenarios. However, the scenarios also address some of the SWOT diagnosis in a new light. I encourage you to have a look!

Marcus

04/05/2015 11:06 AM

I find the absence of VR a major omission. It's going to have a major and very noticeable impact on society and will become mainstream just a quick as smart phones.

Aurelio Barbato

11/07/2015 02:53 AM

There is a strong sinergy with the world's mega trends. To find the best solutions is very important in terms of sustainability for the scenarios insights. Thank you vary much Marguerite Grandjean for your interesting suggestions. I will see them.

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